Professional Development doesn't have to be a fate worse than death.
I take a lot of PD. It's almost intervention worthy, really. In my 10 years of teaching I have amassed not just my Master's degree in Education but also 1500+ hours of PD classes.
And to be completely honest there is literally only 1 single class I have ever taken (which was delivered by a third party curriculum development group) that I truly found 100% pointless and an absolute waste of my time.
How can I possibly have taken more than 70 PD courses and only had 1 bad experience? Well first I have a district that truly values PD and went out and recruited some of the best in the business to run the show, but most importantly how I view and approach PD is the difference.
What PD Isn't: A recipe:
Professional development is not a recipe. Why? Because every classroom is its own diverse group of ingredients.
All quality teachers I know have things they do year after year, but the true constant in their room is change. They are constantly changing their methods, their approaches, the tools they use, the materials they use.
This is because they know what quality teaching entails. Have a clear overall structure and then use different ways, based on their students wants and needs, to get them there.
If you go into PD expecting the instructor to hand over an exact step by step of exactly how to make your classroom better you are going to be frustrated and disappointed every. single. time.
They don't teach your kids. And you will never be them. So expecting to take what someone else is doing without putting your own twist or spin on it to adapt it to your ingredients is a waste of everyone's time.
Just like the best chefs can take a recipe and use it as a guide but then easily substitute and transform it based on their expertise, so too can quality teachers with PD.
So if professional development isn't going to hand over a clear and easy step by step guide to being an amazing teacher, what's the point?
Teachers are professionals. And the one thing all professionals can't get enough of are tools. When you are a professional you are constantly finding yourself in similar situations with lots of key differences and you have to be able to adjust your practice at a moment's notice. And how do you do this? You have a ridiculous amount of tools to use to get the job done.
Think of how many tools are in a Dr's office, or how many books/software systems a lawyer has to have access to, or how many tools a master carpenter keeps in their shed or garage, or how many different brushes painters have, or how many products hairdressers have on their stands.
When you are a professional you have to be able to quickly and efficiently adapt to circumstances which are always changing. And in order to do that you need to have a wide variety of tools to choose from. From the basic tools you use in almost every job, to the expensive and detailed tools you don't use very often, but when you need them you really need them.
Teaching is the same way. There are a few tried and true tools that all teachers should use like Backwards design and multi-modalities. These are things you can and should use every single time because they are effective, efficient, and they work for just about everybody.
But you are also going to need lots and lots of specialty tools that you might not use often, but when you need them you really need them: like specific reading strategies, or behavior interventions. These specified strategies are what save your sanity, and make you a bonafide quality professional.
PD is about providing you a large set of tools so that you:
1) have a strong base for organizing your teaching. This structure means that you know you will have the foundation necessary to be successful, and so you don't have to completely reinvent the wheel every single class period, or year.
2) have a variety of specialized tools for all different kinds of situations. These are the tools that allow us to truly differentiate and target students' weaknesses so that they can become strengths.
That’s why my online courses are set up to be a toolbox, not a step by step guide of what to do. I give you different structures, outlines, and ideas and you take what works for you. And can come back to it over and over again as new challenges and ingredients (cough-global pandemic-cough). So if you are looking to have a toolbox that has practically every tool you can imagine in it, Enroll in the Ultimate Classroom Transformation today!
Once you purchase the course you have lifetime access to it! And when I add more tools you will automatically be grandfathered in. So what are you waiting for?
